April 14, 2009

Each year, we host the 800ceoread Business Book Awards, where U.S. publishers and authors nominate their books for a variety of categories of business, from leadership and management, to sales, marketing, and biographies. This year, we did something a bit different by hosting an event in NYC that honored all the winning books for 2008, plus the overall category winner. The overall winner of the 2008 Business Book Awards was Seth Godin for his book Tribes.The video below shows Todd Sattersten and Jack Covert presenting Seth with his Award book, and Seth being his gracious and inspiring self:

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In our second to last installment of articles from past editions of In the Books, we have a short essay from mister Jon Mueller. In it, Jon shares some of his insights on an oft-discussed topic around these parts—the future of the book and distribution of ideas.
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The Shifting Landscape of Moving Ideas: The Art of Publishing in a Socially Empowered World BY JON MUELLER
The book remains the definitive source for deep exploration of knowledge on a topic.

Portfolio publisher Adrian Zackheim posted a year in review from that house's perspective on Monday that stands out as a beacon of hope amidst all the publishing gloom of late. (As you all probably know, Portfolio is the publisher of The 100 Best. ) Adrian sums up 2008 as follows:
Despite reduced store traffic through the year, Portfolio reported topline sales growth of 22% and gross margin growth of more than 50%.

In Tribes, Seth Godin writes, "Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable. In other words, if everyone could do it, they would, and it wouldn’t be worth much.

The books on our 2008 shortlist for the Leadership Category are:
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin (Portfolio, October 2008) This may be Seth Godin's most important book yet. It's human nature to want to be part of a group that shares a connection, passion and a common leader: a tribe. Technologies today have changed the make-up and creation of tribes, enabling them to communicate and grow in ways not possible in the past.